Passing Time

Though I have been back in the US for a while, I feel like I should add a little bit about how I passed time while I was relaxing at home in my apartment in Grenada. There was always the option of people watching, and I played Civilization 4 on my laptop. Another good way to spend time was playing Sporcle (www.sporcle.com) because it was interesting, educational (I can now name all 195 countries) and didnt need a lot of bandwidth to run (Nicaraguan internet is slow).

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

This was Alice's last day in Nicaragua, so we had to hit the last spot on her list of places to visit: Masaya. There is this pretty cool place near the center of town called el Viejo Mercado (the old market). It was originally built as a general city market, like those found in every city in Nicaragua. In the 80's, the government refurbished the walls surrounding the market and turned the whole thing into a cultural attraction. They built a bunch of shops and stalls in there, and now it is all a giant touristy thing. Nonetheless, it is a pretty cool place to visit and has lots of little things like cigars and flags, which I've been looking for as souvenirs. After we finished our shopping, we headed back to the bus stop to ride back to Granada. Once we got home and showered (it was especially hot today), we realized that we were completely starving. We went to a bar/restaurant called Kelly's Bar, and had some really delicious food for a great price. Definitely a place to revisit soon :).

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

We received a rather rude awakening this morning, because there was some sort of large marching band/procession thing passing near the house at 5 o'clock in the morning. To make things worse, there were also a bunch of fireworks being launched with the parade, so there were the unexpected, unpredictable explosions. After it passed, we went back to a sleep for a while before actually getting out of bed and starting the day. Today we returned to San Juan de Oriente, because we wanted to buy souvenirs and presents and such, and we couldn't really do it the last time we were in town (because we were on our way to Ometepe before). We hit a whole bunch of little shops, buying a couple things in each one. I got a bunch of little things at one of the stores, and in addition to a discount, the shopkeeper gave us a free whistle as a gift. It was getting kind of late by this point, so we caught a moto-taxi across the highway and up the hill to the Mirador in Catarina (the lookout over the Laguna de Apoyo). There was a beautiful view, but then we had to hike all the way back down to the highway, where we learned that the buses to Granada had already stopped running for the day. Instead, we took a moto-taxi all the way back and it started raining halfway there, so we actually got a little wet, but it was still kinda fun. I always like riding in those things. They amuse me. Dinner was a pizza and some wine and champagne, and then we went to bed.

Friday, December 4th, 2009

Today we had to pack up and leave Ometepe, after spending a wonderful couple of days here. This meant that we had to wake up early again, because we needed to grab the same bus as yesterday. Breakfast was uneventful, and finally paying off our bill was actually pretty easy too. We went out to the bus stop, and soon enough a bus came trundling down the road with a couple of people hanging out the front door. We thought at first that those were just the guys working on the bus (helping passengers and collecting money), but it turns out that the bus was super full and those were passengers. Anyway, we waited another ten minutes and the backup bus came, so we weren't really delayed much in our travels. The bus ended at the harbor in Moyogalpa, so we only had to walk about a block to find our boat. Instead of the big ferry, we ended up on a much smaller boat heading back to San Jorge, which was pretty cool. There were some choppy parts out in the middle of the lake, and for a while the boat seemed to be leaning so far to the side that the deck felt almost perpendicular to the water. I also think that it was a faster boat, but I'm not 100% about that one. Thanks to the fact that the Rivas-Granada bus route isn't very popular, they only have buses every couple of hours or so. Instead, we took a cab back, which was kinda pricey, but not too bad and it was a lot faster. We were both really tired, so once we got back to Granada, we just showered, relaxed and went to bed early. These pictures are both from the boat. The one of Alice is just showing the lake, but the other one has a view of the harbor in Moyogalpa in addition to the "luggage rack" of the boat.

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

Waking up to an alarm this time, we managed to make it to breakfast early today. With vivid memories of yesterday's breakfast, Alice was very much on guard against the hoards of Huracas. When one flew too close to the table, she attacked it with her fork, and they all stayed back while we ate. As soon as we stepped away from the table, however, they swooped in and devoured the last bits of watermelon that were left on my plate. After that, we went out to the front of the hotel and caught the chicken bus out to Charco Verde. It should be pointed out that while a decent road exists between the two major cities on Ometepe (Moyogalpa and Altagracia), the road leading out to places like Playa Santo Domingo is a terrible, pitted, wildly uneven dirt road that is usually shared by cars, trucks, buses, cows, horses and the occasional pig. Well, we survived yet another bus ride down this rode, and got off at the entrance to the Charco Verde wildlife reserve, were we spent most of the day.

As you can see from the map included in this post, there are two major trails in the reserve. We decided to go for the long loop trail that includes a view of the Green Lagoon, a lookout point up on a cliff over the lake (Punta Gorda) and a walk along the beach. We sort of strolled along the trail, taking a bunch of pictures of flowers and whatnot. It was especially entertaining because there were lots of lizards of all sizes and colors skittering around along the path, mostly trying to avoid being crushed by careless tourists. It should be noted that we did almost step on a snake, thinking that it was just a lizard and would move out of the way. That might have gone poorly I'm thinking. After our hike and a swim in the lake, we went back to the Charco Verde Inn, which is the starting point for the trail, and ate a pretty tasty lunch at the cafe there.

Unfortunately, we were given bad information about when the bus was coming by, and ended up having to take a cab back to our hotel. After a quick shower, we went back down to the beach where I proposed and collected a bunch of the sand to bring home as a souvenir. Tonight, the moon was still pretty full, but it didn't come out as early as it usually does down here. When it did rise, it was a really cool orange color for a while. Since this was right about when we finished our dinner, we went back down to the beach to look at the moon for a while. Down there, there were a whole bunch of these enormous frogs hopping around and they were also pretty fun to watch. The first pic is of the map of the trails, the second is of the Green Lagoon, the third is from the clifftop and is la Isla de Quiste, and the fourth is a picture of Alice at the beach.

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Our first morning on Ometepe started later than we anticipated. We forgot to open the curtains, and so slept until 10. This scrapped our plans to go to Charco Verde today, so we looked through the hotel's informational booklet and found an interesting tour to do. We decided to go on a horseback riding outing to a place called Ojo de Agua and back. After making our reservations at the front desk, we went back out to the restaurant to eat some breakfast. We noticed a bunch of blue, black and white birds (called Huracas) and didn't think anything of it, which was our mistake. Alice got excited about them later on in the meal, and decided to go over and take some pictures of them. It turns out that these were just the decoy birds, and while she was distracted, a bunch of other Huracas flew in and stole her bread and some of her gallo pinto (rice and beans). We did get some nice pictures though :). After we ate, we headed out to meet up with Jairo, our guide for the trip. He set us up with a couple of horses (mine was Palomo and Alice's was Lucero). We rode along the beach until we came to a road leading through a plantain plantation.

This got us to Ojo de Agua, which was pretty awesome. It is a natural spring that has been turned into a kind of pool thing. It is completely surrounded by jungle and plantain trees, which gives it a very secluded tropical sort of feel. At least, it would be secluded if there weren't a whole bunch of people there :). After swimming around for a while, we got a couple of highly overpriced drinks and then rode our horses back to the hotel to grab lunch, which we ate with a wary eye out for birds. After lunch we hung out at the cabin in our hammock and rocking chairs, and then went out to walk along the beach and take more pictures. By then it was getting dark, and we grabbed a light dinner and went to bed early, because tomorrow's agenda starts much earlier. There is a picture of the food stealing bird, one of Alice on her horse and one of Ojo de Agua.

Tuesday, December 1st, 2009

Another early morning, but today I had to be in a different San Juan (de Oriente this time). Alice and I had to be at a 10AM meeting to talk to the board of directors of the Cooperativa Quetzalcoatl. I say we had a meeting, but I really mean that I had a meeting to talk to them and Alice just hung out in the room and tried to follow along with the rapid-fire spanish. It was actually really great, becuase once we were done, I had an agreement with the coop to run the whole project. This makes my life so much easier, becuase I get to skip the whole beurocracy of working with city hall and the mayor :). After the meeting, we caught a bus down to Rivas and taxi from there to the port of San Jorge. While we waited for out boat, he grabbed lunch in a restaurant right on the lake. Outside the restaurant, there was a blue barrel lashed to a tree, and we weren't quite sure what to make of it until we got close to it. Thats when we saw that the barrel was home to a pet monkey. He was really funny, so we spent a long time watching him :). We next boarded a ferry to la Isla de Ometepe, where we are planning to spend the next three or four days on vacation. After the ferry ride, we caught another bus, this time taking us around the island to Villa Paraiso, our hotel on la Playa Santo Domingo. We ate dinner at the hotel's restuarant, with a beautiful view of the beach and the lake.

After dinner, we went for a walk down along the beach to take in the lake at night. Once we got to a sufficiently secluded spot, I proposed to Alice, and she said yes. So I guess that we're now engaged :). It was sooner than I had originally been thinking, but when I was planning my trip to Nicaragua, I decided that there might be a spectacular opportunity to propose somewhere romantic, and I just couldn't pass that up. This opportunity turned out to be a proposal standing in the surf on a black sand beach under a full moon in the middle of the jungle between two volcanoes on a tropical island in Lake Nicaragua. I had her grandmother's engagement ring, which I got from her parents before I left. She was very surprised, to say the least. Because it's sooner than we would have gotten engaged had this opportunity not arisen, it is going to be a fairly long engagement. After we finished talking on the beach and admiring the moonlight on the lake, we went back up to the hotel restaurant and shared a bottle of champagne. Once that was gone, we went back to our cabin and went to bed.

This first picture is of the awesome pet monkey from San Jorge. The second is a picture of the engagement ring. Third is a picture of Alice standing where I proposed, and the last one is of the two of us later in the week. Mostly, it was the only picture of us from the island that we both really liked.